


Threadbare

by DragonBandit



Series: Sex Work AU [2]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Feelings, Getting Together, H/C bingo, M/M, Pneumonia, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-07-27 10:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20044117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonBandit/pseuds/DragonBandit
Summary: Peter's knees give out on him somewhere between one street and the next. His lungs full of mucus, his ribs aching. He can't feel the cold anymore.That's bad right? That he can't feel that. That's really bad.





	1. Chapter 1

The world spins around Peter as he sinks to the ground. Even in the relative shelter of the porch the biting cold rips through him. He sniffs, burying his face in the high collar of his jacket, red nose brushing the silver cloth. The problem is he doesn’t feel cold. He knows he should—-he’s outside in late November wearing ripped skinny jeans, a T-shirt, a jacket that’s more patches than original material, and shoes with soles thin enough Peter can feel individual pieces of gravel through the rubber—-instead he feels like he’s burning up.

His entire rib cage is one gigantic ache, his nose blocked and stuffy, sweat drips down from his greasy fringe. He should go home, sleep off whatever this is until he’s fighting fit again. 

Peter snorts. Yeah, he should go home. Too bad these days home is whatever shelter he can find that takes sick, down on their luck hookers. Spoiler alert: The answers 0. Not once Peter adds Jewish, gay, and mutie to his list of sins.

Sorry Wanda, Peter thinks as he tips himself forwards. While you were off being a super genius at MIT or Caltech or wherever the fuck you decided to go to school (right now all Peter can remember is away from me), I totally fucked every thing up. 

I lost the house. I spent all the money we got from Mom’s life insurance. And now I’m going to die of some stupid cold outside someone’s front door. I was going to tell you about the job. Eventually. When it was better, or when you graduated, whatever.  When I couldn’t hide it anymore. It would have been a funny story. That two years or so where I sold sex while you learned how to save the world. Just classic Maximoff twins, you know? Everything was going to be just fine. 

Peter blinks, and finds that in the time it’s taken him to close and open his eyes the sun has started to set. Long shadows stream across the concrete sidewalk, turning the world into a chiaroscuro painting. Bright gold against heavy black. How long has he been sitting here? 

That’s bad right? That he can’t remember that. That he can’t connect the dots between here and now in the cold he can’t feel and this morning when his biggest thought had been swallowing what little pride he had left and begging Kurt for… What? Money? A bed? Food? Anything. Anything he could get. 

Even though he’d told himself weeks ago that he had to stop fucking up Kurt’s life just by being in it. It’s all fun and games until you’re making a not-yet-priest have a crisis of faith because you’re too good at convincing him to take his pants off. So he hasn’t seen Kurt in like a month now. Big deal. Definitely has no bearing on the fact that he’s felt like shit for the past month. Definitely hasn’t made Peter aware of, again, that he only has one friend and she’s busy saving the world without him. 

Yeah, he’s 100 percent expecting Kurt to slam the door in his face. But he’s the only chance Peter’s got. Wow, does that thought make Peter feel two inches tall. He’s using the only friend he’s got around. 

Kurt’s not even his friend. 

He needs to remember that. 

He needs to get off this damn porch and get somewhere warm and dry to spent the night. 

Peter’s next shaky exhale turns into a coughing fit. Mucus clogging up his throat until it expels itself in a sticky white and green mass against the inside of his elbow. 

At the end of it he’s shaking, wrung out to the point his legs feel like he’s strapped lead weights to his ankles. The soles of his feet brush the other side of the porch. He should be able to feel the cold stone through the paper-thin rubber but there’s nothing there. No ice cold. No rough brickwork. Nothing. Everything is blanketed, numbed under the fog. Though his ribs hurt like a bitch, so there’s that at least. There’s still feeling in his chest. That’s good, even though right now Peter wishes he didn’t. 

Yeah. Okay. Peter gives. He’s not going anywhere. 

Fuck. 

The sun’s gone down entirely now, leaving only the shadows and the flickering street lamp from across the road. It’s not the worst picture in the world. Not anywhere close to what Peter wanted the last image of his life to be, of course, but he can think of worse. 

He hopes his dead body isn’t found by like a kid or something. That would really suck. He doesn’t want to be the reason someone has to go to therapy. He’s not worth enough to give someone that kind of trauma. Not on a school morning. Or good weekend. Whatever the date is. Doesn’t matter. 

Wanda’s going to fucking kill him when she finds out... 

Peter’s eyes close.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things this fic was meant to be: A: A fill for my bingo card and B: Short. 
> 
> It is neither. And it took far longer to complete than 6k words has any right to be.

Thirty minutes before closing, Kurt finally gives up on Peter showing his face. He’s been waiting in the bar that Peter usually haunts practically all night. Waiting for a man that he has no business meeting with, alternating between talking himself out of this insane idea, and buying more shitty, watered down American beer. Perhaps it’s good that Peter had never showed up. Less temptation for Kurt to succumb to like this—and succumb he would because Kurt has yet to find a way to deny himself the pleasures of one Peter Maximoff. 

It is not fair. He has not seen Peter in a month and still his thoughts are consumed by laughing blue eyes and the memory of long legs wrapped tight around his waist. 

Not to mention the worry that churns in Kurt’s gut along with the alcohol. Peter had tried to hide it from him: Dark circles would be covered with powder, his visible ribs waved off with an excuse about his mutation. Kurt hadn’t believed it. Every day, Peter would be a little bit skinnier, a little bit tireder, wearing away inch by inch. Then of course there was the way Peter would cycle between moods, reaching hyper only to fall back to despondent in the space of a few minutes. Kurt had never seen track marks on Peter’s arms, but he had worried regardless. 

Worry that was unwanted. Peter doesn’t want to see him anymore. He doesn’t want Kurt or his help…

He isn’t Peter’s priest. They’ve both made that abundantly clear. 

He waits and waits, but Peter never shows up. 

That’s for the best really, but it doesn’t feel like it. If Peter is not here, then where is he working? 

Kurt trudges home in the winter chill, bundling his coat close to his body. HIs head town, tail a morose curl between his legs. Like a dog that’s been kicked, and Kurt would laugh at himself for being such a picture of misery if i were not for the fact that his heart has turned into a hot leaden ball inside his chest. 

Wherever Peter is, Kurt hopes that he is being safe. 

There is a bundled up figure curled up in the Duchin’s front porch. It seems that even Kurt’s leaden heart has room inside it for more than self pity, for it twists and sends Kurt across the road, up to the door. 

Perhaps this is a sign from God. Here Kurt is looking for Peter, and instead he has found some other poor soul practically on his doorstep in desperate need of help. The church would tell Kurt that he should deliver them to a shelter, or to the church itself, but Kurt knows when he crouches to get a better look at the man that he isn’t going to do that. He’s going to take this poor man home and offer him his own bed. 

“Excuse me?”

No response. Kurt tries again, gently shaking the man on the shoulder. His brow furrows when his hand connects; even through the coat Kurt can feel him burning up. “Excuse me, my friend? Wake up, please.” 

The next time Kurt shifts he triggers the emergency light screwed into the awning. Harsh blue light throws the entire scene into sharp relief. The shadows that had warped the man’s features are banished, revealing his identity. 

“…Peter?” He can’t believe it. But here he is…

Again, there’s no response. 

“Peter!”

Merely a low pained mumble comes out of Peter’s mouth. It sounds wet and when Kurt pays attention there’s a whistle to the rapid, shallow breaths. 

“Oh Peter, what have you done?” Kurt asks, heart aching in his chest. He pulls Peter’s dead weight—too little for someone as tall as Peter is—into his arms. 

Kurt chews on his lip, unsure what to do. Peter is ill enough that he should go to a hospital. Lord knows that Kurt would do it without a thought if they were both still back in Germany but here in America, Kurt is torn. Take Peter to the hospital and saddle him with an astronomical bill, or take him home where he may not even last the night? 

“Either way, we cannot stay here,” Kurt says into the freezing, late night air. Against his chest, Peter is a line of fever-heat sinking through his thick coat. 

Home wins. It’s closer. Peter needs help now, not in the half-hour or more that it will take an ambulance to arrive and spirit him out of Kurt’s arms. Teleporting would put too much stress on Peter’s body, Kurt cannot risk it. So he has to drag Peter up the stairs to his tiny home, hyper aware of the feeling of Peter’s ragged breathing against the short fur at his throat. 

He dithers in the doorway of his bedroom, once he’s tucked Peter into the narrow bed. Unwilling to leave him but all too aware of how awkward watching Peter sleep will be. The fact that the want is innocent doesn’t seem to register to his rapidly beating heart. No matter how much Kurt tells himself that it is to make sure that if Peter takes a turn for the worse, Kurt will be able to help before it is too late. All he can think of are the other, significantly more heated evenings he has spent with Peter in his bed. There is nowhere else to sit in his room save for the foot of the bed, so Kurt perches himself as close to Peter’s legs as he dares, fighting off sleep. 

Sometime between midnight and dawn, he loses that fight. He sleeps curled up by Peter’s feet, dreaming of quiet mornings when Peter’s guard had dropped enough to let himself sleep, and Kurt had to get ready for Mass. In his dream when he kisses Peter there’s no guilt there, wishing for things that he does not have. There is just Peter, and there is just him. 

Violent coughing startles Kurt out of sleep. He jerks awake, rolling up onto the balls of his feet on the floor, unable to place where he is for a few seconds before he remembers. Then all of him is consumed with worry. 

Peter has twisted the sheets in sleep, trapping himself in a cocoon of soft, beige cotton. He sounds like he’s choking, great gasping heaves of breath only to expel them out in a series of harsh coughs that must hurt. 

“Oh, Peter,” Kurt sighs, carefully maneuvering around jerking limbs to set the sheets back into place until he can sit Peter up against the headboard. His fever has not gotten any better, red skin overheated when Kurt presses a hand to his forehead. There’s not much he can do, other than wait the attack out. He settles for rubbing between Peter’s shoulder blades; hoping that it soothes the ache at least a little. 

It feels like he spends a small eternity waiting, though Kurt is sure that in reality it was only a minute or two at the most. 

Spent, Peter collapses against Kurt’s side. He’s shaking from the fever. Sweaty in a way that makes Kurt regret not taking off the rest of Peter’s clothes when he divested him of his shoes and coat. 

“What?” Peter says faintly. “Where’m I?”

“You’re at my house,” Kurt tells him, “I found you on the side of a road. What happened to you? Why were you not somewhere warm and dry?”

Peter blinks at him, head twisted up, his blue eyes hazy. “Mom?” He blinks, shakes his head. “Nnh. No.  _ Kurt. _ Kurt, What am I doing here?”

“I carried you to my house. You’re very sick.” 

“It’s just a cold.” Peter says. He tries to push himself up, off of Kurt’s chest, but halfway there his elbow’s collapse and he lands with a soft whumpf back in Kurt’s arms. 

“It’s more than a cold. I think you need to go to a hospital.”

“No!” Another attempt to support himself. In the end, Kurt takes pity on him, and arranges his meager pillows to form enough of a backrest for Peter to lie at least half upright against. “No hospital. I don’t wanna go there. I know that I’m… totally the last person you wanna be around right now, but please… I’ll sleep on the floor, or go entirely. Just don’t take me to a hospital.”

The plea is marred by the fact that Peter spends the tail of it coughing. Kurt rubs his back, feeling every one of Peter’s ribs underneath his fingers. 

“Are you sure?” He asks. 

Peter nods, still breathless. “Yeah. Yeah, I just need to sleep for a bit. I’m not that bad. Really.” He adds, under his breath, “Can’t afford the bill for a hospital anyway.” 

Reluctant, Kurt nods. “You can rest here. For as long as you need to.” Longer, Kurt’s heart adds, before he squashes it. Now is not the time. 

“Is there anything you need? A drink? Food? I don’t think I have any medicine, but I can go and look.”

“I’m fine,” Peter interjects. “Just tired.” 

“You should rest.” And Kurt should go. Peter gives him a wan smile, letting himself shift against the pillows. His eyes are already drifting closed. He really must be very sick, to not argue with Kurt about it. A minute later, Peter’s breaths have evened out into if not true sleep, then close enough to it. Kurt watches for another few minutes, telling himself desperately that it’s to make sure that Peter really is alright. Even as he brushes a strand of hair out of Peter’s face, he keeps his thoughts platonic. 

He doesn’t press a kiss to Peter’s forehead, even though he wishes to. 

His tiny living room has never felt so cold. 

Peter sleeps all day, only waking to cough thick mucus out of his lungs, and use the toilet. The next day is not much better, or the day after that, and Kurt quickly falls into the routine of making sure that Peter eats and drinks, and doesn’t asphyxiate on the gunk coating the inside of his throat. He worries constantly. Both about Peter’s health, but also the rest of it. It was bad enough when he didn’t see Peter. Now? Kurt cannot ignore how his heart races every time Peter smiles at him. 

It’s only when he’s in the process of trying to remember how to make chicken soup, that Kurt realises he’s missed Mass, not to mention all of his classes. He’s never missed either before, and for a brief moment he is guilty. Then Peter tries to get out of bed by himself and ends up sprawled on the floor and Kurt forgets all about his guilt. 

“I should go,” Peter says sometime on Monday, four days since Kurt found him on the side of a road. 

“You’re still not well,” Kurt tells him. 

Peter closes his eyes, and doesn’t argue. 

Anyway, I want you to stay, Kurt thinks. A familiar guilt coiling in his gut at the thought. In penance, he promises himself that as soon as Peter is better Kurt will help him find somewhere else to live; somewhere far away from Kurt. He will be a good neighbour, and tend to Peter in sickness, until he is well, and then he will help him get back on his feet. Find him a place to stay, help him get a better job, and that will be it. That will be all. 

And when Peter is better, and back on his feet, Kurt will tell his mentor that he is ready to join the church. 

God knows, that he has been distracted for too long. 

It is conviction that straightens his spine, and twists his tail. (It is his heart breaking that causes the bone deep ache of sorrow that follows Kurt into sleep.)

In the middle of the night, Peter’s health takes a turn for the worse. Later, Kurt will not be able to say what wakes him from his slumber on the couch. All he knows is that something is wrong. Something has happened. He rushes to Peter’s room, to find his pale skin clammy, sweat dripping off of him. Peter’s kicked the sheets off in his sleep, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. When Kurt places a hand on his forehead, he pulls it back to his chest with a hiss. 

Human beings should not be that hot. Ever. 

“I should have taken you to a hospital,” Kurt tells his unconscious charge. “Verdammt, Peter!” 

Once again, he drags Peter’s dead weight onto his shoulder. Peter doesn’t even stir. Nor does he cry out when Kurt tips him into the tiny bathtub in the apartment and turns the shower on to spray lukewarm water down on the two of them. Peter’s fever desperately needs to go down, but if the water is too cold it will send him into shock instead.

Kurt does what he should have done at the start of this, and calls a Doctor. “Please be awake,” he mutters into the ringing cell phone. “I need help, please be awake.” He can’t tear his eyes away from Peter, still fast asleep. Kurt had tried to wake him up, but the only response he’d gotten was a weak moan, and Peter unconsciously trying to shift away from the shower spray. Even lukewarm, Peter’s body had protested that it was too cold. 

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to wait long. Halfway through the third ring, Kurt is graced with the very wide awake voice of Dr McCoy. 

“What’s the emergency?” He asks. 

Kurt breathes out a tense breath. Of course the doctor already knows something is seriously wrong. Why else would Kurt be calling at such an hour? “I need your help,” he says. “I have a friend, I think his lungs are infected with something. I woke up to find his fever… too high, and he won’t wake up, even though he’s in a cold bath. Please. I don’t want him to die, and hospitals are…” 

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Dr McCoy says. “When did this start?” 

Kurt spends the next fifteen minutes detailing in excruciating detail the past two weeks to the Doctor. In the background, he can hear the sound of a car engine, and then rapid footsteps that end with his doorbell ringing. There is no time for pleasantries. 

Dr McCoy asks, “Where is he?” at the same time that Kurt says, “He’s in the bathroom. He still hasn’t woken up.” 

Dr McCoy nods. His expression grave, heavy blue eyebrows furrowed over narrowed eyes. Kurt follows him to the bathroom. Only to have the door close in his face by an inadvertent foot. Fine. The bathroom is really too small for three people anyway. It barely fits two. And Kurt should give Peter his dignity, if he cannot give anything else. 

Explaining it to himself does not at all help the worry, worry, worry, that strangles Kurt’s lungs. There is nothing he can do, except hope, and pray. So he bows his head, clasps his hands together, and begs God to let Peter heal. Every second that passes is another small agony. When did Kurt get so used to Peter than his absence feels like a wound?

It feels like an age passes before the door to his bathroom opens again. Kurt stands from his crouched vigil, fingers clutched in the hem of his shirt, tail wrapped around his ankle. “How is he?”

Dr McCoy smiles at him, the hard edge gone now from his large frame and yellow eyes. Peter easily cradled in his arms, still fast asleep and bundled in a threadbare towel. “He’s got pneumonia.”

Kurt swallows a swear behind his teeth. 

“He’ll be okay, so long as he rests,” Dr McCoy continues, turning to the bedroom to set Peter back into bed. He tucks the blankets up around Peter’s neck. “And he needs to take antibiotics and be put on oxygen until his lungs are clearer. It would be easier if he went to a hospital…”

“No.” Kurt interjects. “He doesn’t want to go to one, and I can’t betray his trust.” 

Dr McCoy levels a hard stare at Kurt. “Caring for him will be a lot of work,” he warns. 

“I know.” Kurt drifts until he’s standing by the head of the bed, staring down at Peter, instead of meeting Dr McCoy’s eyes. “I know that it will be hard, and there will be no reward at the end of it. I’m prepared for that.” 

Peter’s sodden hair has fallen into his eyes again. Kurt corrects it with gentle fingers, smiling softly. 

Dr McCoy coughs awkwardly, and Kurt comes back to himself with a start. He shoves his hand in his pocket. Peter’s fever-warmth clings to his digits. 

“I’ll bring the supplies here,” Dr McCoy says into the awkward pause. 

“Thank you,” Kurt says. What else is there to say? 

Then, for a week, all there is to Kurt’s life is making sure that Peter fully recovers. Everything else falls by the wayside. He stops going to Seminary, and finds he does not miss it. None of his classmates bother to check on him, and Kurt finds that he doesn’t care about that either. 

For a long stretch of time, Peter is little better than comatose, strapped to an oxygen mask, too weak to support himself upright the way Dr McCoy wants him to. Kurt eventually ends up propping Peter up with his own body, sleeping with Peter’s head tucked against his shoulder, back against his chest. Kurt is so very warm, and not all of it can be contributed to Peter’s fever bleeding through his thin nightshirt. 

In the end Peter sleeps through two and a half solid days before abruptly waking up only to complain that “His entire body feels and tastes like ass.” 

Kurt decides not to ask Peter how he knows that. 

He stays awake long enough to force down a glass of water, and a small amount of broth, before his starts to falter again. When he sleeps, he leans back against Kurt’s chest, snuggling close and Kurt tries not to read anything into it. 

The days are better when Peter is awake enough to complain. Kurt laughs at Peter when he grimaces at the taste of antibiotics and the prescribed energy drink. He takes over reading when Peter whines about being bored to tears by TV, and too sick to read properly. 

“I am so sick of being sick!” Peter exclaims “Come on, I’m fine now, let me out.” 

“Are you still coughing up mucus?” Kurt asks, eyebrow raised. It’s a rhetorical question. This is not the first time that Kurt’s asked it. 

“Noooooo.” Peter answers with a grin. 

“You’re not getting out of that bed until you’re better.” 

“Kinky,” Peter says, and laughs himself into a coughing fit when Kurt stammers. 

Kurt never does manage to reclaim the couch as his bed. He sleeps either propping Peter up against the headboard, or curled up by his side when Peter’s lungs finally clear enough that he no longer needs gravity to persuade his lungs to work. The bed is too small for two people. It could be argued that it’s too small for one. Kurt sleeps with Peter’s sharp knees pressed into his thighs, his tail draped artlessly around Peter’s hip. Peter’s breath is wheezy. Kurt is sure that he mutters in his sleep. It’s the best rest he’s ever had. 

It can’t last. 

This is temporary. As soon as Peter is better, all of this will go away. It has to.

Time passes in inches. Soon Peter is wandering around the house, cleaning everything in an attempt to “Pay Kurt back.” He isn’t very good at it. All of Kurt’s bowls go missing until he realises that Peter has placed them on a shelf too high for Kurt to reach, and he always misses some vital step when he attempts laundry. Peter makes comments about getting out of Kurt’s way, that Kurt pretends not to hear. He’s not better. He’s not ready. 

When Kurt is more honest with himself, he knows that it’s he who is not ready to let go. Not yet. Kurt is not honest with himself often these days. 

It all comes to a head almost a month after Kurt found Peter on the doorstep of his neighbours. He comes home from an errand to find the house empty. No note, nothing of Peter’s left in the house (not that he ever had much, merely a dirty backpack that looked like it could hold a change of clothes and not much else), nothing. 

For a moment Kurt just stands in the hallway, clutching his coat to his chest. He swallows, throat thick. Lethargically, he hangs his coat on the hook behind the door, places his nice shoes next to his battered sneakers, and sinks onto the couch to stare listlessly at the blank TV. So this is it. This is the end. 

It’s not how he had imagined it. In Kurt’s musings there had been more talking. An envelope of money exchanging hands. Possibly another Doctor’s visit just to make sure. Sometimes Kurt had imagined yelling; another performance of the argument that had taken Peter away from him the first time. More often, and filled with more guilt, Kurt had imagined Peter under him, one last time before they parted ways. 

Kurt had not imagined that Peter would just leave his life without a single word. He hopes he’s well enough to be out. Especially when Peter has made it clear that he doesn’t intend to come back. 

What is he meant to do now? Can he visit Peter at his usual haunts?

Kurt buries his head in his hands. 

No. No he cannot. He is going to go to his mentor, he is going to become a priest, and he is never going to see Peter again. That is the plan. That has always been the plan. So why does it feel like he is placing his neck into a noose instead of taking off a shackle? 

Rain hits the window, shaking the glass in it’s frame. Kurt fails at not imagining Peter out in that weather. His silver hair getting more and more sodden as his coat fails to protect him from the wet chill that surely will just bring his illness back. Kurt had planned to at least give him a decent raincoat before he left. Something that would have actually been able to protect him. 

Perhaps he has been lucky, and some stranger has paid Peter money to share his bed for the day.

It must be the chill of the rain coming through the window that causes Kurt to shiver. 

Lethargic, Kurt watches daytime TV to fill the silence. He curls himself up into a tiny ball on the couch, the tip of his tail brushing the tips of his ears. The rain doesn’t let up, instead building itself up until it sounds like a storm is raging outside the apartment. 

The sound of canned laughter from the program almost covers up the sound of the front door opening. Almost. 

“There’s nothing here to rob,” Kurt calls to the hallway. The geometry of the apartment means that there’s a wall between him and the door. He has no idea who his burglar is, and he doesn’t care to check. “Not unless you have a fondness for annotated bibles and German beer.”

“German beer? You’ve been hiding the good stuff from me?” 

Kurt blinks. He sits up just in time to see Peter round the corner of the living room. His patched jacket stained dark—almost black—grey from the rain. His ratty jeans water-logged up to his knees. Two bags clutched in one of his hands. 

“You’re soaked,” Kurt says, blankly. 

Peter grimaces, nose wrinkling. “That’s the last time I trust that guy’s weather report. I was promised cloudy skies and light showers. Light showers!” He puts the bags onto the coffee table, their insides spilling out onto the cheap plywood. Cans clatter to the floor. Peter winces, bending over to pick them up. 

Kurt reaches out, tentative, until his finger is resting on the back of Peter’s head. Peter starts, jerking up fast enough that he looks like two frames from a stop motion cartoon. “Fuck, your hands are cold!” 

Kurt tucks his hand against his chest. The rain sticking to his fingers, and even then Peter’s body heat clings to the digits. He runs hot, one reason the fever had been so bad. He’s really here. It isn’t a lovesick dream. “Are you sure you’re not the cold one?” 

“I’m sure that I’m not the one sticking my fingers on the back of unsuspecting people’s necks,” Peter retaliates. He sticks his hands on his hips, “What’d you do that for, anyway?”

“Where did you go today?” Kurt asks back. Internally he winces; he sounds like a nagging wife wondering why her husband has been gone all day.

Peter, thankfully doesn’t seem to notice. His pout falls away, replaced by a bright smile. “We were totally out of like, every kind of food I can actually eat. All we had was bacon and tomato soup and I was not feeling soup. So I went to the store—borrowed the spare change you leave under spare keys, sorry—figured I’d make us some real food to celebrate how I’m totally over this illness and never need to spend any time in a bed ever again.” 

Kurt eyes him dubiously. “You’ll have to spend time in a bed eventually, considering.” 

Peter blinks. And then his mouth splits open into a grin that quickly turns into hysterical laughter that turns into a coughing fit. 

“Peter!” 

He holds up a hand, “I’m fine!” he says, between gasping breaths. “Totally, totally fine, I didn’t expect you of all people to make a hooker joke.” 

“I meant eventually you need to sleep,” Kurt informs him, sticking his nose into the air, clearly joking. 

“I  _ know. _ Of course you’re too saintly to ever make any kind of sex joke.” Peter wiggles his eyebrows and Kurt can’t help but smile indulgently at him. 

“Not in English, and not when it will make you cough out your lungs.” 

“You know, I’m not that bad anymore.” Peter says, the words fast enough that Kurt has to concentrate to hear them as a sentence instead of nonsense. The humour has dropped out of his voice, replaced with a tone that Kurt can’t place. “I’m not sick anymore. You don’t have to keep me underfoot. I’ll be fine on my own. I saw this shelter a hop and a skip away, they’ve still got beds free and they don’t know about the whole mutant, gay, jewish…” Peter’s voice fades. “I’m not sick anymore.” 

Kurt realises, in a rush of hot shame, that he’s been staring at Peter with something close to horror for the entire duration of the speech.

“I know. You’re doing a lot better.”

“Yeah, exactly. I’m walking and talking and everything.” 

“And dripping water all over the carpet,” Kurt adds, “Are you trying to make yourself sick again so you have an excuse to stay longer?” He tries to smile, but it feels more like a baring of teeth that doesn’t reach his eyes. 

“No! Of course not! I wouldn’t do that to you… But I should… change.”

“And shower. Get the chill out of your bones.” 

A flash of expression that Kurt doesn’t catch before Peter’s turned his head away. There’s the blur of Peter abusing his power to get out of this awkward situation as fast as his feet can carry him. A second later, the pipes of the apartment groan a complaint at being forced into use. Kurt bends down, gathering up the fallen groceries, and puts them all away without really registering what he’s doing. 

Milk in the refrigerator, pasta in the cupboard, eggs on the side table and then with the milk when Kurt remembers himself, stare down at the granite countertop, tail wrapped tight around his ankle and not understand why he feels so horrible. He makes hot chocolate on autopilot, metal whisk scraping against the stainless steel saucepan as he mixes the cocoa into the milk. Belatedly, he wonders if it counts as enough of a seperate meal that Peter will be able to have meat for dinner. 

He should ask. It would be remiss of him to serve something that Peter can’t eat for his last meal in this house. Kurt snorts. Last meal. It’s not that morbid. Peter isn’t dying, after all. 

“That smells good,” Peter says, announcing his presence in the doorway of the kitchen. The thin cotton of his shirt clings slightly to his shoulders and collarbones where water has collected. Kurt tracks a bead down the pale column of Peter’s adam’s apple, before he tears his eyes away. 

“That’s a new shirt,” he says, looking down into the heated milk. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Peter perch himself against a spare bit of the counter. 

“Oh. Yeah, I stopped by this storage locker I rent to get some new clothes. It was about time I stopped stealing your shit, or wearing the stuff I’d been wearing when you first found me.” 

“My clothes don’t fit you very well,” Kurt says, unsure if he’s agreeing or disagreeing. There’s a guilty part of him that is already lamenting the loss of the strip of visible skin that always occurs between his own shirts and trousers when Peter wears them. He pours the hot chocolate into two mugs, sliding one of them over to Peter. 

Peter moans when he first takes a sip and Kurt almost almost scalds his own tongue trying not to choke on his own mouthful of cocoa. 

“This tastes better than it smells,” Peter hums. His eyes are closed in pleasure. <s>He looks exactly like he does when Kurt takes his—.</s> “You need to teach me the recipe for this before I leave. Maybe I’ll get lucky and have enough money to afford this kind of shit every so often.” 

“It’s not very difficult to make. It’s just milk and sweetened cocoa.” 

“When I make hot chocolate it tastes like muddy dishwater,” Peter says. 

“You’re using the wrong brand of cocoa. American brands aren’t sweet enough, so you just end up with a bitter soup.” He takes another sip, slower this time, savouring the sweetness, fortifying himself. “I’ll give you some, before you go.” 

Peter’s lips quirk up, not quite a smile. His hot chocolate already drained thanks to superspeed, and chronic hunger.

Kurt ends up curled up on the couch again, legs under himself, tailed curled around his knees. Peter an artless sprawl of bony limbs beside him. So close, and yet… 

“Tell me about this shelter,” Kurt prompts, after a minute or two where he merely contemplates his drink. 

This time Peter’s smile reaches his eyes. “It’s really great. It’s like this repurposed gym or something. They filled the basketball court with beds, and turned the smaller exercise rooms into classrooms and offices. I wasn’t the only mutie there—I saw a guy with grey skin and moving tats talk to one of the volunteers—and I didn’t see any of the usual signs that something shady was going on where I couldn’t see. One of the volunteers actually saw me lurking around and offered me a bed…”

Kurt listens to Peter exult about the new shelter, and tries to be happy for him. This is a good thing. This is the sign that Kurt has done what he was meant to do. He has cared for Peter in sickness, and now it is time to let go of him in health. 

But the more Peter talks about the woman that he met, who Kurt wants desperately to like—She sounds wonderful; kind and caring and sharp as a whip—the more he hates her. 

“You know, I’m gonna take her up on that offer of a bed,” Peter says, “I can pack up all my shit this evening, leave tomorrow. You’d finally get your place back to yourself. I know that you didn’t really want to share your life with anyone else, let alone me. This apartment is cramped for two people, and the whole studying to be a priest thing, I mean. You’ve been great—You’ve been amazing. Really. But I’m okay now. You don’t have to keep looking after me—”

“Stay,” Kurt says. 

Peter blinks. “What?”

Kurt bows his head, scrunching up his eyes, already berating himself, but when he tries to tell Peter that it’s nothing, the words spill out of him. A dam broken. “Stay. With me. I’ll get a bigger bed, I can find another apartment. One that fits both of us. You don’t have to go to the shelter.”

“Kurt,” Peter says, quiet, and slow, a wealth of emotion in the one word. “you don’t have to do this.” 

Kurt shakes his head. Eyes closing, as he admits to himself, that yes, this is something he is going to fight for. No matter that he shouldn’t. No matter that he has tried to tell himself that this is not something he can have. He is meant to be above earthly desires. He is not meant to want soft kisses and smiles in the morning, and a warm body to hold at night. 

He shouldn’t. 

He does. And he doesn’t want to give that up. 

“What if I want to?” He looks up at Peter then, yellow eyes meeting blue. Both of them choked with emotions that they’ve both been so scared to name. “What if I want you to stay?” 

Peter leans back. Blinking his eyes, too rapidly. “I—What? Why would you want that? What about your priesthood?” His voice goes loud and high, “What about the fact you think I’m some fucking test of god that you’re failing?” 

“Then I fail.” The instant he says it his entire body is flooded with relief. Bits of himself he didn’t know were tensed finally able to relax. He laughs. “Then I fail.” 

Peter looks at him like he’s suffering from a bout of insanity. He catapults himself off the couch, spinning so he can stare at Kurt, aghast, arms held stiffly out by his sides in fists. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to be the reason you fail! I mean, come on, look at me. I’m a no-good, mutie, trailer trash hooker. What do I possibly have…”

It doesn’t take much to step into Peter’s space, and he watches Peter’s throat bob with unsaid words, as Kurt finally lets himself do what he’s been thinking of for so long. He puts his hands on Peter’s narrow waist, feeling Peter shudder at the touch. Peter wets his lips, his eyes overbright. 

“What are you doing?”

“Failing.” 

He reaches up the slightest amount he needs to press Peter’s lips to his own. For a moment they both stand still. A moment of time stretched into eternity. Then Peter makes a wounded noise, and he grabs the back of Kurt’s head, reeling him up and in, the kiss abruptly turning from chaste and innocent to hungry need. 

“Shit,” Peter says. “Shit, I shouldn’t have done that, shit, shit, shit.” He tries to disentangle the two of them, but Kurt’s tail is tight around his legs so it’s stay still or trip. He angles himself away from Kurt, the scant distance feeling like a mile. His lips are red, and spit shiny and Kurt desperately wants to lean forwards and capture them again. 

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not thinking clearly about this.” 

“I am.” 

“No! You’re not! You’re gonna be a _ priest.  _ I’m a  _ prostitute _ .” 

“I think I’m going to quit seminary,” Kurt says, offhand before he sighs rubbing his thumb against Peter’s hip. “Do you want to be a prostitute?” 

“Well… No.” Peter admits, “But that isn’t the point! The point is, that I’m ruining your life. Why can’t you see that?” 

“Because my life is happier when you’re in it.” Another truth that feels so good to finally admit. These things that he has not admitted to anyone, not God, not himself. “I think I’m falling in love with you.” 

Peter laughs, startled. 

“Is it really that funny?” 

“…No.” Quiet, Peter’s own confession. “Guess not.” 

“Stay,” Kurt says again. “Please. Don’t vanish again. Stay here with me.”

“This isn’t gonna work,” Peter says, still in that small, lost tone. 

“You don’t know that.” Kurt cups Peter’s face, forcing their eyes to meet again.Kurt has been told that his foreign physiology makes his body language hard to read, but Peter has always been able to work him out. It’s just another thing that makes him so valuable. He must read something, because he slumps in Kurt’s hold. Surrender in inches. “I know you have questions, and doubts.”

Peter snorts. 

“I do too.” Kurt continues, smoothing his thumb along a patch of stubble by Peter’s ear. “I don’t know how this is going to work, but I have to try, if you’ll let me.” Please, please let me, Kurt does not say. He’s sure his eyes say it for him. “We can figure it out. Together. We don’t have to know all the answers right now, they’ll come. Right now, all we need is a chance. So stay. Stay with me, give us that chance. The rest will sort itself out when we get to it.”

Peter’s head has tilted, seeking the comfort of Kurt’s hand against the side of his face. “Are you  _ sure _ you want to quit priest school?” 

“Peter,” a chastisement that he doesn’t mean, and Peter knows it. 

He smiles, helpless. Tipping himself forwards until he’s tucked against Kurt’s chest again. His arms wrapped tight around Kurt’s shoulders. “Okay.” He says. Finally. And it feels like something that was broken finally slotting back into place. “Okay. I’ll stay.” 

**Author's Note:**

> [My H/C Bingo Card](https://coinmanatee.dreamwidth.org/1614.html#cutid1)


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